Monthly Archives: February 2007

Ask any non-Georgian about what type of agriculture is offered in our State and I’m betting wine would not be on their list. But in fact, this map from the Georgia Wine Country shows Georgia has close to 30 wineries and vineyards combined.

I’m bringing this point up today because our legislature is introducing a bill to allow wine shipments to homes in Georgia. This AJC article says the bill won unanimous approval from the House Regulated Industries Committee but will face a tough time winning the Governors signature if the General Assembly passes it since Gov Perdue has vetoed wine bills in the past.

Overall, this bill is a good thing for Georgia. It will boost our tourism industry, support our local wineries and allow consumer connoisseurs to ship up to 20 cases a year directly to their house from farm wineries — including out of state wineries in Napa Valley.

Of course, one argument the opposition typically presents is being able to prevent sales to minors. But since we already solve this issue for wineries outside of Georgia, we can definitely help our back yard neighbors. Now also seems like a good time to point out that we’ve been named a “Sweet 16” semi-finalist for the Top 10 Innovative Technology Companies of Georgia because of our age and identity verification solutions. The winners will be announced next week.

Roy Cooper, the Attorney General from North Carolina announced yesterday that he is proposing State law changes that will…

“…increase punishment, give law enforcement better ways to track down offenders and require those who discover pedophiles to turn them in.It would also require social networking websites to get parents’ permission before their children share personal information that would leave them vulnerable to a predator.”

This is the first State to move towards regulation.I won’t be surprised if the other 38 Attorney Generals in the coalition follow suit soon.You can read more about Coopers proposal here.

So sunny San Fran turned out to be not so sunny this week.But the outlook for identity is definitely very bright!

There were definitely some significant events at the show. First, Symantec’s announcementat DEMO the week before to provide an Identity Service and their demonstration (with our technology supporting it I might add) at RSA definitely made the Symantec booth a place to visit. Symantec’s approach to being an identity provider is fairly comprehensive in terms of helping consumers and businesses tackle the identity problem.And they certainly have the distribution to get consumers behind it approaching the much debated chicken and egg scenario from the analyst community.

The biggest buzz of course was from Microsoft’s announcement to support OpenID.There is much being written about this announcement and the significance it has for Identity 2.0.This definitely indicates that the collaboration of technologies is being embraced by all to create a more open management system for public identities. If you want to read more about this announcement check out this article from the Seattle Post Intelligencer which explains the significance in great non-technical terms for any non-techie readers. You should also check out Kim Cameron’s blog for a more behind the scenes view from Microsoft and technical discussions.

Perhaps one of the most significant things to me was the General Session Panel Discussion on “Pandora’s Box:Youth on the Internet”.Clearly with this high profile focus, the security industry is starting to see the importance age plays in our online world and how we need to provide better ways to protect our children.I think anyone with kids gets this quickly but impressing on the huge dangers the Internet presents to children to those without kids is still very much needed based on a few personal discussions I had at the event.

No matter how good a parent is, the danger is still present.In fact, before the panel discussion began, we learned that 70% of kids ages 10-17 have received sexual solicitation over the Internet and only 27% have told a parent or guardian about it.There were other scary things discussed which you can read about here in the recap article from CNET.But one thing I was a bit disappointed about is the lack of discussion on age verification in social networks.However, I was very encouraged by a comment from Facebook’s Chris Kelly who referred to the fact that we need to develop technology solutions that help provide the same protection standards online as in our bricks and mortar world.I couldn’t have said it better myself.

Getting a glimpse into the life of cyber criminals is almost as chilling as the rain and sleet that fell in Atlanta yesterday. I’m heading out to Sunny San Francisco early next week for the RSA Security conference. Stop by and see us if you can – we’ll be on hand in the Symantec booth to answer questions about identity verification.